Bennu is acarbonaceous asteroid in theApollo group. Discovered by theLincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project in 1999, it is named afterBennu, a bird ofEgyptian mythology associated with the Sun, creation, and rebirth. Bennu has a mean diameter of 490 metres (1,610 ft) and has been observed extensively by theArecibo Observatory planetary radar, theNASA Deep Space Network, andOSIRIS-REx, aNASA mission that landed on and hasreturned samples of the asteroid to Earth. Bennu is classed as apotentially hazardous object, with a cumulative 1-in-1,750 chance of impacting Earth between 2178 and 2290. This mosaic image was produced in 2020 from photographs based on two years of close observation of Bennu by OSIRIS-REx.Photograph credit:NASA /Goddard Space Flight Center /University of Arizona